


In Death's Other Kingdom

by plaidventurer



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Weirdmageddon, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gen, Grunkle Ford's Portal Adventures, Grunkle Ford-centric, Grunkle Stan Needs A Hug, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Language, Older Pines Twins, Sadistic Bill Cipher, Stangst, The Nightmare Realm (Gravity Falls)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 19:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11516337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaidventurer/pseuds/plaidventurer
Summary: Bill’s followers must have retreated after the realization that their leader was blasted into nothingness, but not until they were through with their new chew toy. Ford remembers the yellow shining on scales and talons and how he swallowed when he saw (felt) the razor-like gleam. Those gory faces with their endlessly black eyes and the way their jaws clamped around his legs arms chest soul--Everything is okay.In which Stanford Pines decides that the fate of the multiverse is more important than his own when it comes to the complete destruction of a certain Bill Cipher.





	1. Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Titles and excerpt at the end are both from the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.
> 
> Please heed the warnings. I don't think this gets too graphic (?) but beware of mentions of blood and some gore.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

His head feels unnaturally full, like only now has he grown a functional brain to sit solid and heavy in his skull. And maybe that’s true, because he hasn’t felt very smart at all since the day of the deal he made thirty years ago.

 

Nothing but a slowly pulsing, shivery sensation exists inside Ford’s body. The world is sluggishly moving in bright blues. He’s on his back. A kind of clarity he has only felt once or twice washes over him in waves of cold and muted sounds.

 

The world is both dark and light at the same time.

 

Frankly, it’s disorienting.

 

There’s this fuzzy feeling creeping across his face and chest, all numbness and dull screaming of nerves, fingertips drumming on ground that chills bone-deep. A voice, or maybe many, sifts through in pieces. It’s all cloudy, like he’s drowning. Drowning in the blue, probably.  Usually the water is dull green or olive-tinted brown, with particles of sediment blowing against his lips and lungs, and he thrashes blindly in the deep of some foreign planet.

 

Usually he doesn’t give up this easily.

 

But it’s not giving up…not really. Just giving in to a larger current that cannot really be fought.

 

_you can’t quit or give up they’ll call you a freak you’re nobody you’ll die and they’ll hate you hate you hate youhateyou_

 

Now the world is ending, falling to pieces around him, but Ford thought he had saved it, finally. After all these years, he finished what he started. It appears that his quest is taking the life it gave root to in the first place. It isn’t shocking; quite the opposite, actually. He never would have expected any less.

 

_Cipher is dead the world is ending the world is saved but for you it’s ending_

 

He knows this feeling of irrepressible lethargy from the deserts, where he lay with hot sand pressed to his bones and what was left of his body, knuckles prominently shaped against the wispy threads of sand blowing in the wind. All the world was blinding sun and it swam before his eyes. His mouth was parched and his finger pads cracked from the dry air. As sand blew in clouds into every crease of him, he felt pieces of himself fly off with the wind.

 

He knows it from the ice of rivers swollen from streams, thrusting him into jagged rocks until the palms of his hands gushed red into the water. Until his head clashed with the stones, rendering him unconscious before he awoke, choking and vomiting, with his face flush against the bank. Until he fell upon his back, mind swimming, throat closed. The blood pooled around him like an omen.

 

And he knows it from the pain that never stopped, wouldn’t STOP and it’s all-consuming, that pain that puts him deep under a cloud so vast he can’t feel it anymore. It’s fucking shock, Stanford Pines, it’s fucking _shock_ and you’re _dying_ but everything is okay in this void.

  


Everything is okay.

  


He is weathered, and he is worn. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to be? How it _should_ end?

 

Ford smells water, and roses, of all things. Sweat and salt and metal. Cigar smoke that has faded from acerbic and dark to a pale gray odor creeping across the floor in faint mist. The sort of scent that is damp and musty at the same time, with the sharp sting of chemicals. The smell of a dark place, a deep place, but honest all the same. Somewhere underground where demons might have trouble finding him.

 

He takes in a raspy breath in this peaceful place, blinks once, and feels himself sink into the floor. Perhaps he is but a ghost now, and the blue light flickering all around like a beacon is just calling him home.

 

Perhaps he should follow it…?

  


Everything is fine now, yes. Everything is okay.

  
  


Everything is…

  
  
  
  


...there’s a shape over him, now.

  


It’s tinted blue and murky, hovering in circles directly above Ford’s face. It isn’t touching him, but close to, like it lies just out of reach. The sense of peace settles into his core, like he is somewhere safe. Like he is home. But that’s been impossible for thirty years now, hasn’t it?

 

Sweat cools on his face and drips down his temples like water leaking from a basement pipe. His breath whistles in his throat. Every sound is too large for him, and every feeling too elusive.

 

The voices come louder now, as if this nameless blob is shouting down at his soul as it lifts from a broken body. That sort of thing would usually be mildly annoying. Now, Ford welcomes the noise. It gives him something to focus on besides the ugly nausea in his gut that makes him wonder if all of his organs made it here with him. He’d rather sleep than even try to pay attention, honestly, but his mind just wants to keep ticking like it always has, even though most of the time it probably should have just stayed mute. His damn survival instinct is still struggling to hold on and preserve his life, even though he had to override that just a short moment ago. A moment before he was pushed backwards and everything turned blue and he started tasting copper sloshing around in his mouth.

 

Ford vaguely recalls feeling pain, then, or something akin to it. For now, all he can think about is the voices and the colors and the black spots in his vision. Someone is wheezing and whimpering. Is that...is that him?

 

The closest voice shines through clearer than ever. Clearer, louder, and higher in pitch. Panicked, perhaps. But who’s panicking? Certainly not Stanford Pines.

 

He’s calm as smooth pond water. Still as cold, blank death.

 

And maybe that should worry him. Maybe he should _feel_ something, but that’s honestly out of his control.

 

Even though he’s helpless, it’s comforting, in a way. It’s comforting because everything he has ever had control of has become royally fucked beyond salvation. Like his life, and his few healthy (ish) relationships, and the potential safety of the world. Not to mention the partnership with Bill Cipher that _he_ initiated. So it’s nice to finally have the universe doom him instead of the other way around.

 

The water is muddled. His head is muddled, too, and tired, and now Ford feels weightless as well as hollow. Floating. As if he is drifting through a room without walls where teacups and chess pieces collide gently in the open air. Where equations dance exquisitely in their grace and beg to be discovered. Where common mortal laws are forgotten, and demon deals seem like something ingenious. It’s not like he hadn’t been warned, if not through the clear-as-day markings on the cave walls where he summoned Bill in the first place then by dozens of accounts on demon lore. And yet he still ignored the signs.

 

Fluid cools and runs in rapids down his chin. It bubbles hotly at his lips.

 

_“Stanford!”_

 

 _Finally_ something discernible comes through. It’s his name, isn’t it? No one has said it for quite a long time. Not like that. It’s only been nicknames, mockery, objectification. Sixer and Fordsie and Six-Fingers and _pal_. He...he’s Stanford. Stanford Pines, yes, and he's been wandering the multiverse on a suicide mission for three whole decades. In some dimensions, it was spread over even more. Time is funny in that way. Some days he would age years in a single moment, or sometimes in reverse. He entered dimensions only to find all of his reflections appearing as him at age seven, when he thought his fingers were his only defect, or age thirty, when his eyes lay on purple carpets and that damn twitch just wouldn’t leave his mouth alone. Now he vaguely wonders if he has fallen into another strange time warp of a different kind, because he is so young and helpless but old and tired in the same moment.

 

_who are you who am I what am I doing what did I do_

 

Whoever said his name...that _voice_...they cry it out again, louder and closer, right in Ford’s ears. Or...where he imagines his ears are. It’s hard to tell what from what and who from who, or where he is, or why he just keeps floating.

 

If he’s just going to levitate here, unable to move and so, so tired, he might as well give in to the sleepy tug of the water.

 

It pulls him down, down, down, deep.

 

_sleep sleep just rest_

 

“Soos, keep the kids back. _Please_. I’ll explain everything later, I promise. I have to help him now.”

 

Who’s _him_? Ford? Ford doesn’t need help. Never. No, he’s already completed his final mission, and these are the consequences. There’s no helping him now.

 

“Mabel, sweetie, there’s a first aid kit on the shelf. Over there, yeah, throw it to me, please. _Hurry_.”

 

 _His_ world is ending, but he saved everyone else. He _saved_ them.

 

He saved them, because...it’s all a little foggy under the smoke, how…?

  
  


_Oh_.

  
  


He starts to remember.

 

It comes back not all at once, but in waves that clap over his head and rain down in fine mist. One rolls up first, _crash_ , then the next. And the next. And the next. He closes his eyes to soak in the memories, to feel them on his face and under his skin.

 

Ford remembers the inky blackness, like what is forming behind his eyelids now, and the rocks like asteroids dancing in streams of bloody crimson. He remembers the sounds of stars and galaxies hissing and spitting, and of thinking that _this is it, this is Hell_. This is what he wondered of, during bouts of childhood insomnia, many years ago. What is death? What lives in the eternal night in his head, beyond the book smarts and memories and consciousness?  Hidden under the covers with Stanley asleep in the bottom bunk of their bedroom, late at night with the moon beams playing soft shadows through the gaps in his secret blanket shroud, he would wonder.

 

He remembers the chilling laughter and the sudden doubt before the storm, where he noted the formation of the portal gateway and the finale he was so close to. In the end, he was unselfish, and thus the deed was done.

 

He remembers the gun pressed tightly against his cheek. He remembers the sharp sting of metal making quick contact with his face, and the steadiness of his hands. He remembers aiming. He remembers breathing in, once, twice, and letting it all go. His breaths were whole, then. Not breaking and hissing like they are now, as if through a punctured balloon. Strange.

 

He remembers the blue beam that left behind curls of lavender smoke, and the chaos, and the stench of burning flesh as muscle bubbled and imploded in a brilliant flash of yellow and red. He remembers how the laughter turned into a scream and then the screams of many others while the gateway opened in a swirling ring of blue fire behind him. He remembers, best of all, the triumph, and how he knew deep inside that it was all over.

 

And he remembers feeling shock and resignation, and the force pushing him backwards, far, far backwards, until he reached the claws and teeth and finally the never-ending blue. Cipher’s goons, waiting by the portal’s edge. In that moment, he had curiously likened them to Crampelter and his sneering gang of bullies from years ago. He'd never been brave or strong enough to face them. His brother could get in a punch or two and get away with just a black eye, but Ford...Ford would wake up with blood oozing from his nose and a new crack in the frames of his glasses that Stanley would patch up later. And his twin would ruffle Ford’s hair, say _We’ll show them someday, Poindexter,_ and they'd smile because one day they were going to sail out of that godforsaken place.

 

Maybe, just maybe, Ford had become both strong _and_ brave since then. Enough to take on a literal demon and come out in--well, _mostly_ in one piece.

 

Bill’s followers must have retreated after the realization that their leader was blasted into nothingness, but not until they were through with their new chew toy. Ford remembers the yellow shining on scales and talons and how he swallowed when he saw ( _felt_ ) the razor-like gleam. Those gory faces with their endlessly black eyes and the way their jaws clamped around his legs arms chest _soul_ \--

  


Everything is okay.

  


And then it’s not because something is pulling him back, pulling him _up_ and it _hurts_ oh god it _HURTS_ , oh god oh god there’s pain and light everywhere and nothing is safe from it, _nothing_ is hidden from the pulsing eye.

 

Ford is drowning, and claws rake across his rib cage, dragging straight through skin that peels back with a sick slippery sound to reveal muscle and bone. Sludge pours from his veins like toxic waste. That makes sense, if he’s being honest. Not even the basic chemistry of his body is pure or safe from his own evil.

 

STOP _please stop I_ can’t

 

And it won’t stop, it just keeps coming and coming and the voice in his ear won’t shut _up_ and he must be losing his mind because he was just at peace seconds ago.

 

 _please please I’ll do anything anything just let me_ go

 

Ford can actually feel something now. That’s good, it means he’s still alive, but it also means that he knows the sensation of his own blood spraying up onto his face and in his eyes as he coughs and chokes on what was burbling up from his throat before. The blue in his vision turns red. He sluggishly tries to blink it away, but it seems that whoever or whatever was just shaking him into a sitting position is already wiping a hand across his face.

 

_please_

 

At first he thinks it must be the thing who caused that _pain_ and Ford flinches away, or try to. The being makes some wounded noise through the waterlogged tunnel of his hearing, like maybe it’s hurting, too, and two hands find their way around to Ford’s temples.

 

If it’s going to break his neck or something, he might as well let it. He’s too tired to resist, anyways. Ford feels his head fall back into the waiting fingertips without his permission, and a little gasp or sigh or some other pathetic noise comes out with an “oh” when the burning pain dials down to a low smolder. There is a low pressure on his abdomen that aches, but it is nothing like the white-hot spitting fire that scattered through his bones before. He realizes with some degree of surprise that he has been brought up to sit against a cold structure. It makes it slightly easier to breathe, at least, even with icy tendrils worming their way in to squeeze his lungs back to their shrunken state. And when the hands on his face start to move again, slowly, he waits.

 

Nothing happens.

 

They just brush against his jaw, forehead, cheekbones. Liquid smears in messy streaks that turn chilled in the damp air.

 

“ _Shit_...Ford?”

  
  
  


Ford’s dying. He must be.

 

His lungs are deflating, barely inflating, deflating again.

 

It’s cold. He knows where his head is, now. He can feel his arms, legs--chest? Is there anything left there at all? All it seems to be is an empty cavity. Was there anything to fill his hollow bones and arteries in the first place? Maybe when he was young and small, and ignorant of the world.

 

_you thought you were so clever then_

 

Things in his line of sight are slowly blurring into focus. Ford can still see blue--it’s absolutely everywhere, but it looks less bright and brilliant than before--and shapes made of shadows. Everything is numb around the edges, like his thoughts and emotions and the pounding in his stomach and throat.

 

_so clever indeed_

 

His hands, face, legs, everything...everything is cold.

 

It’s so cold.

 

The only thing that’s warm in his life is the liquid dripping with a tiny _pat   pat   pat_ sound from Ford’s lips. Even the hands stroking his hair and the creases by his eyes have gone cold, now. He can barely feel them anymore.

 

“I just got you back...no, no…I just...I just got you back…”

 

There...there goes that voice again, penetrating through the heavy curtain wrapped around his senses. It is sad. It is crying. Maybe Ford is, too, but he can’t feel it.

 

At least one thing is clear, now, and that’s who the voice belongs to. For some reason he recognizes it, somewhere under all the layers upon layers of cotton in his newly brain-filled head.

 

Ford blinks.

 

Time goes blank for a second. His world spins.

 

“Stanley?” It’s barely even a word at all, and his tongue is leaden as he tries to speak it, but the voice-- _Stanley’s_ voice--breaks and chokes in some sort of crying-laugh. He hears it. He hears Ford. He can hear Ford. He is here. Why is he here? How?

 

His brother thrust him backwards into the inferno of the portal in the first place, into all that _pain_ and insanity and _loneliness_ \--he must have brought the fires back. Stanley is here to open the tear, rebuild the bridges, save Ford? Save Ford, save the world, end the world if he isn’t careful, end it even if he is.

 

“I’m here, Sixer.”

 

Yes, Ford knows, he just established that. His brow furrows. It’s getting harder and harder to fill his lungs, like his head has taken the weight of everything else and now there is nothing left to power his body.

 

“I did it?” Ford whispers, each word labored like his breaths and heartbeats. Stanley gives him no confirmation, but who is his brother to know, anyways. “I...I did it.”

 

“What did you do?” Stan asks, desperately running his fingers over Ford’s hair. His voice is soft. His hands come back stained red. Stan looks at them in something like rising horror.

 

Ford tries to say something, _anything_ , but all he can do is spit up blood and cough and splutter until his chest burns. It hurts so badly, that _pain_ and he needs it to stop but then his throat clears a bit and he makes a disgusting, relieved gasping noise. He must really be drowning, or suffering the aftermath. Stan holds him tightly the whole time.

 

Wheezing, Ford mumbles, “I killed him. I s…” he swallows. “I saved everyone…you.” His eyelids flutter, eyelashes catching the tears and blood, dancing them in patterns across his skin. And at the time he was hunting Bill he wasn’t thinking about it, that Stanley, his exiled twin, would be included in the “everyone” he was protecting from the demon who fooled him first. Now it hits him with a pale realization, and he doesn’t really know if he feels relief over it. He’s made his peace with his brother, sort of, so it’s not that. Maybe it’s just that he’s too tired, and _feeling_ is an awful lot of work.

 

Stan huffs a watery laugh. He continues to pet Ford’s hair and keep him grounded, and it’s absurd at how gentle he is. Maybe Ford should feel objection to this level of affection, after all that has transpired between them in the past, but he’s minimally functioning at this point and hardly capable. No one has shown him such a simple kindness in a long, long time. “I think you’ve got it the wrong way around, Poindexter. I’m the one who did the saving here,” Stanley says, rushed and breaking. He’s running out of time. Ford’s running out of breath.

 

A smidgen of irritation wells up inside him. That’s not the _point_ , why can’t Stanley just _understand_ ? Ford can hardly breathe, barely speak, scarcely feel anything, and he can’t put it into words the deed he just did for the universe. The wrongs he just righted in this epic sacrifice. He wants it to be _recognized_ for something, damnit, so he hasn’t just wasted the life he was given.

 

_you’re a freak and you’ll die alone in a ditch and they hate you hate you want you dead_

 

“No, no,” Ford protests weakly. “Cipher, I killed him. I saved…”

 

His lips are dry and he trails off. The water swirls lightly in frosty designs above his face. A sweet ringing noise begins in his ears until Stanley shakes his head with his hands and brings him back from oblivion.

 

“Cipher?” Stan repeats. His voice is rising back to panic. It’s getting louder, too, and Ford would wince if he could muster the energy. The volume is extraordinarily irritating. What is Stanley afraid of? Ford? No, Ford shouldn’t be scaring him. Who would be scared of a paranoid old freak who lost his mind to the multiverse? “Who’s Cipher?”

 

The blue keeps swimming across his eyes. The blood keeps dripping from his lips. He cannot answer, because that demon no longer even exists.

 

“Did he say Cipher? _Bill_ Cipher?”

 

Ford blinks. The voice comes from farther back in the blurry blue, past what he can see. Maybe he lost his glasses, or maybe he hit his head harder than he thought, but his vision is too hazy to discern what lies beyond Stan’s face. It sounds young, almost...childlike. Unless, of course, his mind is beyond frayed and the world is still just playing tricks on him at every turn. That would also explain the sickening way he’s seeing triangles _everywhere_ , like the goddamn things are imprinted in him. Engraved into his very being so that they glow and flutter across the pipe-filled ceiling. A really large one glares at him scornfully at an angle a few feet above and to the left of where he sits. It spits blue out at Ford. He fixes it with a distasteful look under half-lidded eyes.

 

Someone else starts speaking in hushed whispers, and Ford tries vainly to listen harder but everything has started going cloudy again. It sounds like there are more people here, but that's awfully strange, as none of them have dared come close to the corpse that is Stanford Pines. The triangle ghosts dance in front of his eyes.

 

There’s so much he still doesn’t know, so many things he has to ask Stanley when he can speak again. _Where are we, who is that talking, how did I make it out of the Nightmare Realm alive? Am I even alive?_

 

_Why is everything so blue?_

 

He keeps slipping, slipping, slipping down into the water and he wants to talk but he _can’t_ , wants to ask but his mouth won’t open and his words won’t form.

 

In a moment of sudden anxiety, he scrambles for a ledge, for a foothold, for _anything_ against the sheer cliff of nothingness. Stan is here, Ford saved him and everyone else, he needs to tell his brother more tell him _more_ get _UP_ Stanford can you, _please_ ? _Please, Ford, I need you, I worked so hard, please._

 

He fights against the water, resisting its tug and pull, but his eyes widen when he realizes suddenly that he has already sunk too deeply.

 

_wait_

 

Stan is in a boat far above him, and Ford waited too long to propel back up to the surface.

 

_wait for me_

 

He struggles blindly, coughing and gasping at the blood burbling up in his mouth like water, and the fingers that were on his face before seem to be clenching around one of Ford’s own hands.

 

_wait I can try I won’t quit not this time--_

 

He fights, and fights, and swims, but he is too far down.

  
  


Too far down, deep.

  
  
  


“No, Ford, stay awake, the kids and Soos are getting help, you’re gonna be fine. We’ll fix you up, just--oh shit--please--”

 

Ford sees Stanley’s face, red and wrinkled. It covers up all the triangles floating around in yellow and green. His eyes are bloodshot in this one moment of true seeing. It’s oddly terrifying, and Ford knows that _this is it_. He notes the pained look on Stan’s face, the pinched tightness of his brows and the way his mouth is curled up over grinding teeth. He looks old. So does Ford, of course, but Stanley seems like he’s aged another twenty years in these few seconds.

 

Ford tries his luck and spares a quick glance downwards through his eyelashes, just as far as he can look without moving his head, just to see what the damage really is, and shit shit _shit_ he really should not have done that because _everything_ is _everywhere_ (oh god oh god) and his body seizes up like he’s going to vomit but there’s nothing left but blood. And his chest starts to tighten, and Stanley whispers something meaningless _shh Sixer it’s okay it’s okay calm down we’ll patch you up shhhh_ but his brother is literally holding the slippery outlines of squishy vitals inside of Ford with what looks like his suit jacket. There’s a first-aid kit on the floor by his feet. One of Ford’s legs is bent sideways, and there is new gauze soaked red across it and crumpled in his twin’s hands. His bones are sticking in shattered pieces out _oh god_ his _bones_ are piercing through charred flesh and his clothes, black, are shiny with wetness. Ford wonders if Stanley could just kill him now, please, and maybe he says that aloud because his twin starts a whole other string of mutterings.

 

_shhh Sixer it’s okay Fordsie it’s okay pal_

 

“Stay still, Ford. You’ve lost a-a lot of blood.” Yes I fucking have, thinks Ford, and it’s still coming out in oceans. “You’ve gotta just stay still for a while, ’kay, but don’t fall asleep. Poindexter, I--Just stay awake and keep still for me, promise?”

 

 _Really, Stanley. What have promises ever been worth to us?_ He maybe wants to say, but then again, Stan is keeping his insides...well... _inside_ for him, so. Another time.

 

Eventually, Ford blinks. Tearing his eyes from the mess that is his body takes energy, a _lot_ of energy, but he does it. He looks back to the man stained with blood in front of him whose glasses are spattered and smudged. He tries to say something, anything (maybe a thank-you), but all that comes out is a weak little noise. A whimper, sad and small.

 

_patch me up Stanley like you did when we were kids_

 

Stan’s breath hitches, and he looks at Ford, _really_ looks at him, until Ford thinks he can maybe even see through the red and failure and utter worthlessness reflected in his eyes. Maybe Stanley can see the man striving to do good and fix things. The man who walked on air in black space with open arms towards death, which came in the shape of a triangle.

 

Ford blinks.

 

Down, down, down, deep, he sinks.

 

Stan sees him.

 

_thank you_

 

He keeps holding Ford’s hand even though he’s submerged completely now. Even though the fading blue is swallowing him and all he can hear is that soft ringing sound that gently coaxes him into someplace better.

 

He killed Cipher. He did the first worthwhile thing in his whole life. Ford finished what he started, and he made it out for just enough time. This is a form of closure, he supposes. A last gift by the universe to test if he’s really changed, if he’s really gotten past the broken projects and fights and blue sucking him away. Now he knows, though, that Stanley was part of the reason he was ever able to kill Bill with his own hands. Without the portal, the experience, the knowledge he gained inside of it, Cipher would not be dead. The world would not be saved.

 

It was dangerous, oh, so dangerous to start the portal up  again, which Stanley must have done, or how else could he be here? And maybe there’s a risk in that after all. There are probably small consequences, long-term factors...and maybe he could fix them, too, but...if he could just keep his eyes open…

 

_shoved him back hard and made him scream, so he pushed you right back you asshole and you fell and you cried out once and even now you can’t stop screaming_

 

It’s odd, Ford half-thinks, that he never used to muse on the past for fear of letting himself fall behind. Funny how being ripped to shreds can change that sort of thing. Here he is, at the peak of everything and ready to plummet down backwards from looking too far past his shoulder. Dead-set on remembrance even though that isn’t always a good thing. Amnesia--or just blindness to the world, _self-induced, reeking of whisky with glass and blood in his hair_ \--seems like a better alternative to the slowing churn of emotions that leaves him feeling fuzzy and quite nearly dead.

 

_two hands, six fingers, shut it down and you’ll lose one from each, but that’s what you wanted all your m i s e r a b l e life, though, so maybe leaving you out in strange places blood in your hair in your mouth on your coat is better. break a rib maybe two maybe more and you can’t stop me_

 

Now all there is to do is wait. The water will cleanse him. It’ll wash away the blood and grime. It’ll take him home.

 

_sitting on the steps, home, waiting for a car that won’t come back. pat   pat   pat goes the rain from the gutter and Stanley isn’t coming back_

 

“Stan…” Everything is okay. Everything is okay.

  


Down, down, down.

  


_hold your breath, Six-fingers, you’re on your way to the bottom. I’m afraid there’s no sunshine down there, none at all, but I can light the way for the both of us. I’ll always be your_ real _partner, you know I don’t back out of deals_

  
  


“Ford, you can’t, not now...please…”

  
  


Deep.

  
  
  
  
  
  


_come with me, IQ_

 

He might as well try.

 

********************************

 

_Is it like this_

_In death’s other kingdom_

_Walking alone_

_At the hour when we are_

_Trembling with tenderness_

_Lips that would kiss_

_Form prayers to broken stone_

 

_-T. S. Eliot_


	2. In Death's Dream Kingdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he hears the wet gasps, sees the shattered lenses of his twin brother’s glasses, he knows only fear.

 

All Stanley Pines knows is elation and fear and some strange sense of foreboding, because the idea has been turning in his head that even after all these years of hard work, what comes through this portal might not be his brother.

 

It’s a logical fear. The thought hasn’t occurred to him until now of what he’ll do if something  _ else  _ comes through that doorway, and now he put children in the way of danger.

 

But when the figure dressed in black stumble-falls out of the brilliant blue, leaving smears of dark liquid across the metal beams and steps as he goes, Stanley is sure--with his heartbeat speeding up and lungs faltering because something is  _ wrong _ \--that this is exactly who he has been waiting for. 

 

And as he wrenches from the portal’s forceful push, he half-runs-half-staggers over to the unmoving form with Mabel’s words ringing in his head.

 

_ I trust you. _

 

She is moving back to stand by Dipper, who is saying something in an accusatory and confused tone, but everything is garbled in Stan’s head. All he can see is the puddle forming and the blue beams of portal light reflecting off white shards and bent limbs.

 

When he hears the wet gasps, sees the shattered lenses of his twin brother’s glasses, he knows only fear. 

 

He collapses beside him and holds him, holds him  _ tight _ and  _ pulls _ up so he won’t drown--with Ford still making those sickening wounded noises--and his jacket is off and over Ford’s body before he knows what’s happening, before he realizes that Poindexter’s guts are sliding down a river of his own blood. He has to help him,  _ oh god Soos Mabel Dipper anyone get help please I can’t lose him  _ but there’s blood everywhere and he just smears it even more across Ford’s stubbly cheeks. 

 

Dipper is shouting and Ford is muttering something about triangles everywhere through the red coating his teeth and lips and his eyes are cloudy and Stan just got him back--

 

And he thinks, when Ford whimpers ( _ no no no please) _ over and over,

 

_ I did this to you.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 350 words of pain, short and sweet. Hope you enjoyed!


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